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UWM scuttled lakefront plans, leaves good ideas behind

In May, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee chancellor Carlos Santiago made it clear that only one site was under serious consideration for a new School of Freshwater Sciences. Anything other than the site of the shuttered Pieces of Eight restaurant would be a distant second choice, he said in a meeting with the Journal Sentinel’s editorial board.

There was a tone of insistence — perhaps even entitlement — used by advocates of the project’s lakefront siting.

Now, plans for a $30 million showcase structure on the lake have been scuttled at least in part because the lakefront spot proved too controversial, and UWM is scouting for new locations.

In truth, proponents of the plan were so enamored with the larger goal — to create a symbol of Milwaukee as a 21st-century hub of freshwater research and industry — that they failed to create a coherent vision for the project itself.

Creating something that is good for Milwaukee in the abstract, even if it’s a profoundly noble plan, is not enough to earn you a lakefront perch. By not capturing our imaginations with what we would see and experience, UWM left the door open for unsophisticated, anti-development-of-any-kind arguments to take hold.

As Craig Mastantuono, a member of the Harbor Commission, told me, the water fountain at Bayshore Town Center offers more potential for community engagement than UWM’s plan did, a plan that included access to public restrooms and nebulously defined exhibition spaces.

“If you can’t beat a water fountain in a mall, then you don’t deserve to be there,” said Mastantuono, who was undecided about the project and had been looking forward to hearing more about it.

Still, UWM and the Water Council have done the city a great favor.

To put it in the most positive terms — Milwaukee has woken up to the potential and importance of this very special place on our lakefront.

Let’s face it, that sliver of land was hardly at the top of the public agenda before UWM came along. Perhaps we confused the forgettable nature of the restaurant with the land it sits on.

“There really isn’t another place like it,” said Mastantuono. “It is right in the center of everything.”

Now, some very good ideas have sifted to the surface because of the debate.

For the moment, it seems likely that the site will be used for a restaurant again. Michael Cudahy, the philanthropist and founder of nearby Discovery World, who recently paid $1 million for the lease to the Pieces of Eight site and had planned to donate it to UWM, has expressed a desire to work with restaurateur Joe Bartolotta.

What’s at stake, though, is larger than the tiny footprint of the 1.67-acre Pieces of Eight site and more long-term than the 9-year lease Cudahy controls. What’s at stake is the connective tissue among some of our most important cultural institutions and the spatial connections between the city and its most defining characteristic — the lake.

This became particularly clear when we asked area architects to share some of their informal design ideas with us when UWM’s plans were still moving forward.

The strange little pier, nestled between two cultural icons, the Milwaukee Art Museum and Discovery World, and adjacent to the Summerfest grounds and down the bluff from the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum, is now recognized for what it is — the heart of what could be a cultural corridor on the lakefront.

It is begging for a project that can unify what is now an inongruous area with no singular sense of place and pathways that peel off in happenstance.

“The idea of putting a cultural institute there to amplify and build on the existing institutions is a very powerful idea,” said Dan Beyer, senior associate with Continuum Architects + Planners, who created a sketch that included a visitor’s center for the Freshwater Sciences school on the lake. “Putting some sort of institution that contributes to the education and enjoyment of the greater community should become priority one for that site.”

The trickiness of the spot is also more apparent than ever. By the nature of the siting and its proximity to the art museum, any structures built there would have to match MAM’s level of architectural excellence while also providing an understated scrim to the museum’s exuberant, postmodern building. And whatever is created would have to partner visually and spatially with Discovery World, which sits quite a bit closer, not to mention the lake itself.

Some of the architects who submitted designs responded more to the landscape itself than either of the iconic structures.

Josh Ehr seemed most interested in seeing the city’s natural and built environments wed back together. His comprehensive proposal (see image, above) includes layers of landscape, from reconstructed marsh that would extend and beautifully soften the hard edge of the current pier, a prairie garden, and a grove of trees. He also designed a wooden boardwalk, a lookout tower, a smaller pier, a café and a central promenade between the Pieces of Eight site and Discovery World.

Korb Tredo Architects proposed a gently arched, hill-like green roof and called for the excavation of the existing pier to allow Lake Michigan to infiltrate and shape the space more naturally.

Many of the architects also recognized the need to counteract decades of piecemeal development on the lakefront, which has emphasized buildings rather than spaces and has eroded spatial connections. Even in the early 20th century, despite a mélange of muddy parks and railroad tracks, sloping pathways down to the water provided progressions of spaces and vistas — the mark of artful public space.

Gil Snyder, associate dean, and James Dicker, adjunct associate professor at UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, taught graduate studios last year that explored the Pieces of Eight site. One of several things that became clear from their research was the need to create a coherent hierarchy of major and minor public spaces.

Inescapable to Snyder, Dicker and their students, was the need to address a larger problem — the shelf-like divide between the city and lake. This led them to consider how other cities have reunited with their waterfronts through unique design solutions, such as those employed at Olympic Park in Seattle.

PARC(S) EMERGENT, a group that included Eric Vogel, Joel Agacki, Ryan O’Connor and Christianna Niemiec, also stressed the need to de-emphasize the severe drop-off from bluff to lake. They created a proposal for a pair of curved, low-profile structures for either side of Lincoln Memorial Drive, each of which would have a green roof, creating public space and new vistas.

The structure on the lakefront would curve up and visually connect with the structure on the bluff, the current site of the Transit Center. The angles of the two proposed structuresquietly respond to the angles of the art museum, while the slopes and heights would counteract the severe drop-off.

James Dallman, of La Dallman Architects, is teaching a graduate studio at UWM’s architecture school this semester that will explore many of these same lakefront design issues.

“The manner in which upper stories might hover above the civic ground plane, and be connected to and grow out of the earth offers some of the most potent possibilities for architectural expression and the making of public park space,” Dallman said.

In the end, the debate over the School of Freshwater Sciences has opened up a larger discussion about the nature of the lakefront and a vision for an urban park, a place of varied experiences that could include architecture, public art and landscape design.

But is it all just pie in the sky now that UWM has pulled out and Cudahy is intent on a restaurant?

Helen Doria, the former executive director of Chicago’s Millennium Park and an expert in the reforms and innovations in America’s urban parks, says not necessarily.

The ingredients for a good design dialogue and actual change, she says, include a strong champion (or champions), a broad discussion that includes diverse constituencies and, eventually, investment on the part of the community.

A catalyst also comes in handy -- and we may get one of those in just a few weeks. If Chicago is selected as a site for the 2016 Olympics on Oct. 2, Wisconsin will be involved in the plans and Milwaukee will be confronted with the possibility of a massive influx of visitors.

What great plans might we make? Who will the champions be?

As for the School of Freshwater Sciences itself, I have faith that locations once dismissed as distant second choices will offer up some good options. While the area around the Great Lakes Institute, at 660 E. Greenfield Ave. has been called an embarrassment, for example, one only has to look at what the Harley-Davidson Museum did with what was a patch of wasteland to envision the transformative possibilities.

About Mary Louise Schumacher

Mary Louise Schumacher is the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic. She writes about culture, design, the urban landscape and Milwaukee's creative community. Art City is her award-winning cultural page and a community of more than 20 contributing writers and artists.

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